U.S. Pat. No. 3,932,699 discloses an autostereoscopic picture-taking device having an array of lenses on which light rays from an object are focused, the lens array being placed against a window that is sensitive to light and constitutes part of a Vidicon tube, for example.
Such a picture-taking device suffers from numerous drawbacks, and in particular from considerable geometrical distortion and small depth of field.
A much more elaborate stereoscopic picture-taking device was proposed by McCormick et al. at the stereoscopic television colloquium that was held in London on Oct. 15, 1992. He proposed taking stereoscopic video pictures by recording an image that is projected onto a diffusing screen by two autocollimated lens arrays. That device suffers from the drawback of considerable complexity and in particular the use of three lens arrays that must be in perfect alignment otherwise the image is affected by extremely troublesome moire phenomena.
In a first aspect, the present invention provides an autostereoscopic picture-taking device that does not suffer from the above-specified drawbacks, and more particularly a stereoscopic picture-taking device that is simple to implement and that-provides high optical quality.
French patent FR 1 362 617 (Yarmonkine) relates to a picture-taking device having a plurality of entrance objectives, specifically two lenses, each having its own optical axis, thus providing two entrance objectives with two optical axes corresponding to respective viewpoints. To obtain a composite image with interlacing, a frosted screen is placed on the plane face of the plate 7 and the screen is scanned horizontally by a normal camera. The screen gives rise to losses of light intensity and of contrast. In addition, given that the microlenses of the array 7 must have a field angle enabling them to see both objective lenses, certain light rays are very highly inclined relative to the optical axis, thus giving rise to problems of vignetting.